The politics of corruption

Dirty tricks

A transition year gives plenty of opportunity for foul play

A FAVOURITE instrument in Beijing's ruthless court politics is a visit by the feared Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and a subsequent allegation of corruption. Some believe that Bo Xilai, ousted as party secretary of Chongqing, was the victim of just such a plot, by way of a visit from the commission to his deputy, Wang Lijun, who later fled to the nearest American consulate.

The dirty tricks of palace intrigues are not exclusive to the palace, especially at a time when the hierarchy of the 80m-strong Communist Party is being shaken up from top to bottom. Not only will a brand new Politburo Standing Committee probably be in place by November, but in 31 provinces and province-level municipalities, 361 cities, 2,811 counties and 34,171 townships, millions of party members are also in the middle of being reshuffled.

Lower down the hierarchy, the corruption allegation, whether true or false, can be brutally effective in sweeping aside a rival. Honesty Outlook, an anti-corruption monthly publication in Sichuan province, claims false reports tend to rise sharply during transition periods. Ou Kezhi, formerly of Sichuan's inspection commission, told the publication that false reports cannot simply be ignored. If the investigation lasts long enough, even an honest official's career prospects will be destroyed.

While some cadres sling false allegations of corruption, others are buying new party titles from enterprising superiors. At promotion time supporters urge cadres to paoguan, or “run around for titles”—ie, make tribute-paying visits to higher-level officials. At the lowest level of power, in villages where party-rigged elections are held, some candidates buy their votes from the public to launch their careers. For the ambitious cadre, being promoted early and often is the only way of one day running a province. The more powerful the job, the greater the monetary value of your decisions, from selling land and licensing businesses to letting a family have more than one child.

Hints of all this only occasionally come to light. In the most notorious title-selling case, in Heilongjiang province in the north-east, 260 officials at various levels of government were caught buying and selling posts. The man at the heart of the racket, Ma De, was given a suspended death sentence in 2005 for paying a provincial official 800,000 yuan ($97,000 then) to become party secretary of Suihua city, a sum he had quickly recouped by selling posts below him. One of the bidders had himself made 2.2m yuan selling positions.

Remaining honest carries its price. Lin Zhe, of the Central Party School in Beijing, tells of a former student whom a superior advised to paoguan if he wanted to be promoted, as his colleague was. The student asked his former professor what he should do. “I told him: ‘You should just serve the people well and patiently wait for your colleague to get sacked.'” He has now waited more than eight years, never rising higher than the county level. Yet Ms Lin thinks the worst period of title-selling is over. Senior leaders stress hiring based on merit in their speeches (though their own elevation usually has more to do with the dark political arts).

These days the corruption allegation is a choicer method to destroy an enemy than the ideological attacks of old. “The excuse of fighting corruption helps legitimise purges,” says Jiangnan Zhu at the University of Nevada, Reno. It is handy too, she says, that corruption charges can be brought against nearly any official. Grey areas exist in every cadre's daily work.